"chap-15" - читать интересную книгу автора (Biggle Lloyd Jr. - All The Colours Of Darkness)

15

Circling the ladder slowly, Darzek made one of his periodic checks of the capsule’s air. He took long, steady breaths, drinking deeply of it, dragging it past his tongue with gastronomic deliberation; and short, powerful sniffs that sought to gauge its freshness around a cloying host of alien odors.

It always tasted and smelled the same to him.

Ysaye descended the ladder on one of his culinary errands, stepped carefully around Darzek, and expertly mixed up six servings of food. He left Darzek’s portion at the foot of his sleeping pad, and went back up the ladder adroitly cradling five triangular bowls between his arms and body. He neither looked at Darzek nor spoke.

Darzek nibbled at the food distastefully, and abandoned his air supply speculation to wonder about Ysaye.

Immediately after the conversation with Zachary, Ysaye began to avoid Darzek. He remained in the upper reaches of the capsule, still the lonely one, estranged now even from his human friend. Darzek could not decide whether the young alien was horrified that Zachary had confided in him, or merely embarrassed because he had not dared to do so himself. Or perhaps some exotic twist of alien mentality was involved.

Or perhaps—

Zachary’s mention of humanity’s good fortune at having only two sexes had startled Darzek into mental immobility. Could it be possible that the aliens had three, that there were two male sexes, and Ysaye was the second—useful, even essential, but fiercely resented?

He hesitated to inquire. As Zachary had said, it was not necessary that he know everything; and at every point that he met alien psychology and physiology head on, they baffled him.

He turned his thoughts again to the capsule’s air supply.

The air circulation system was wonderfully efficient. It filtered the air, removed carbon dioxide and impurities, restored the oxygen content to specification, and returned the air to use. Now that the system had been explained to him, Darzek’s hunch was that the air would never grow foul. The capsule would continue to remove the carbon dioxide and restore oxygen as long as the supply of oxygen lasted. Then it would circulate air that contained no oxygen. Darzek did not expect a sudden drop from ample oxygen to none at all, but he felt certain that the end would come with very little warning.

All of this was byway of attempting to figure out how much time he had in which to concoct a miracle. Between the capsule’s outer and inner shells was an enormous storage capacity for air and water; but how much air had been stored there, and how quickly they were using it, were matters vague beyond conjecture.

But the essential ingredient in this miracle that Darzek must shape was not time, but distance. He could save the aliens only by moving them to safety. His adversary was the ruthless, uncompromising reality that lurked just beyond the capsule walls: the Moon. Neither man nor alien was a match for it without the sustaining resources of another world.

Zachary descended, emulating Darzek’s technique of sliding down the ladder. "Have you enjoyed your cigarette today?" he asked.

"Not yet," Darzek said. "But ‘this would be as good a time as any."

It had been Zachary’s suggestion that they attempt to manufacture cigarettes. He produced a crisp, clothlike material, and in this they rolled such substances as the capsule was able to supply. Some of these burned slowly, raising a veritable fog of choking smoke; others burned with the sputtering rapidity of a time fuse. Finally they found a dark, granular substance that proved to be almost smokable—though it gave off a nasty-lung, purplish smoke and left Darzek’s mouth in a state of acutely puckered sensitivity—and Darzek fashioned himself a reserve of a dozen cigarettes.

During one of the least successful experiments Alice and Xerxes came to investigate the source of the smoke. Alice informed Darzek, by way of Zachary’s translation, that a burning cigarette needlessly squandered oxygen.

"So does breathing," Darzek responded cheerfully, and Alice received the translation and retired without further comment.

Darzek yearned again for the presence of Ted Arnold. Arnold would have calculated the precise amount of oxygen burned in each puff of a cigarette, and knowledgeably estimated the number of seconds of life lost thereby. Arnold would have been a man after Alice’s own heart.

Darzek lit a synthetic cigarette, and tried not to wince on the first puff.

"If you would care now to teach the game to me, I have brought the materials," Zachary said.

"Certainly," Darzek said.

The game that had so intrigued Ysaye had aroused Zachary’s interest, so they proceeded to fill with ticktacktoe diagrams several large sheets of the same material that had been used for cigarette papers. Zachary proved quite as inept as Ysaye had been, but Darzek suspected that his mind was on Other things.

"You mentioned," Zachary said finally, "that you would trade information."

"Any information you want," Darzek said, "provided I have your pledge that you won’t record it for your successors."

"Certainly. They would not accept it if we did. Because we have failed, any message from us would be suspect."

"But surely they will try to find out what happened—where you went wrong, and that sort of thing."

"They will know at once that our power plant exploded," Zachary said. "That they will investigate carefully. Such a disaster as this one has never occurred in all of our history, of course much will be made of it. From your presence they will conclude that we blundered or violated the Code, but no time will be wasted in speculating as to why we blundered or violated the Code."

"My people would speculate," Darzek said. "They would want to know why, so they could avoid a recurrence."

"Indeed. But perhaps your people are more uniform in thought and action. What I would like to know—only from what you would call curiosity—is why Universal Trans continued to accept passengers when some of its passengers were not reaching their destinations."

"There’s a simple explanation. There were no such passengers."

Zachary laid down Darzek’s pencil. "We know that the company was informed. The subject was discussed by the directors. You were hired to investigate it. We ourselves wrote letters to newspapers so that everyone would know about it. And yet the company proceeded as if nothing had happened."

"Nothing had happened," Darzek said. "If a bona fide passenger had failed to reach his destination, friends and relatives would have complained, the police would have made inquiries—even one such disappearance might have stopped the company’s operations. As soon as our investigation revealed that the missing passengers had used phony identifications, the disappearances were recognized for the fraud that they were. The company’s attention was directed entirely at figuring out how the fraud was carried out."

"But our identifications were flawless!"

"With nothing to back them up. No matter how perfectly forged a driver’s license is, it won’t stand up to investigation if no one of that name has ever lived at that address, or if there is no such address. Of course the newspapers would ignore your letters unless they had some way of proving the allegations."

"I understand. Our plan was doomed from the start. It could not possibly have succeeded."

"Not only that, but sooner or later your phony identifications would have gotten you into trouble. You shouldn’t have copied the number of a Universal Trans officer when you forged license plates."

"It seemed that all of the numbers were taken, and that one was as good as any," Zachary said. "Even so, I believe that we should have succeeded had it not been for you. You have more than justified my apprehensions."

"That night outside my office!" Darzek exclaimed. "What were you going to do? Salt me away somewhere until you’d finished your job on Universal Trans?"

"Nothing as drastic as that," Zachary said. "A few changes in your thinking, a little memory erasing, and you would have declined the Universal Trans position. You would have been home no more than two hours later."

"Memory erasing?"

"It is a common procedure among us, with a number of valuable applications. No doubt the concept is strange to you."

"Not at all," Darzek said. "It didn’t occur to me at the time, because I didn’t know you were aliens. Aliens always erase the memory. We have a substantial literature on that subject."

"I do not understand. We never had occasion to use it on one of your people before."

"Perhaps it’s unfortunate for both of us that you missed your chance then."

"I agree, but the policeman had blown his whistle and we feared that the situation might become complicated. We decided to wait for a better opportunity, but we found none."

"At least one of the directors was passing information to you," Darzek said. "For a price?"

"Indeed, no. One of the directors is merely a good friend. We own some of the Universal Trans stock, and we have permitted this friend the use of the proxies. It is only natural that we expect him in turn to inform us concerning the company’s activities."

"Which of the directors was it?"

"Mr. Miller. Mr. Carl Miller. We have given our support to him because his own business makes him interested in freight. It would have greatly simplified our problem if the company had concentrated on freight instead of passengers. We could then have destroyed its equipment without the worry of inflicting injuries."

"The same way you were blowing up Arnold’s transmitters, I suppose."

"We passed a small explosive through whenever they were used. Then your friend Arnold improved the design, and this no longer could be done. It was very clever of him, since he did not know what was causing his failures."

"Arnold is a very clever man. I take it you were also behind the alleged syndicate of realtors that was buying up Universal Trans stock. You must have a well-established base of operations in New York, to develop so many valuable contacts."

"That is correct. Gwendolyn operated our New York—base, as you call it. If she had been there when you caused the explosion, we should have been rescued long before now. Unfortunately all of us had assembled’ here to discuss the situation and to assist Alice in dealing with you."

"In erasing my memory?"

"It is an extremely delicate operation. Is your understanding complete, now?"

"I doubt that it’ll ever be complete. Why go to such amazing lengths to conceal your activities on Earth?"

"Our system has worked with complete satisfaction in our relationships with more worlds than you could count."

"But do you always operate to block a world’s technological development?"

"Of course not. We do this only when the development might threaten others, exactly as you would feel free to place an adult weapon beyond a child’s reach and return it to its normal play with proper toys."

"Meaning that the human race must grow up, or mature, before it can have the transmitter?"

"Perhaps I oversimplified," Zachary said.

"Then we will never be allowed to have the transmitter because our darkness is the wrong color.

"My people are vastly longer-lived than yours, Jan Darzek, but even we hesitate to use the word never.

"Well, is your activity always destructive, or hindering, as it has been on Earth, or do you sometimes help a planet—say, scientific discoveries or a better food supply?"

"We frequently intervene to accelerate a planet’s development. It depends upon the classification."

"In other words, on the color of the population’s darkness."

"I suppose this is true, indirectly."

"And are you just as secretive when you help a planet as when you hinder it?"

"Naturally. That is our Code."

"What would you say if I told you your Code represents the maniacal conceit of a smugly self-righteous and disgustingly imperious race of misguided zealots?"

"I should regret it exceedingly if your feelings were to force use of such language upon you."

Darzek turned away resignedly. "What’s the racket up sbove?" he asked.

"We are moving essential supplies out of the upper two levels," Zachary said. "We’re going to seal them off. Alice feels that we will use our last oxygen more efficiently if we concentrate it in a smaller area."

"I don’t suppose she’s told anyone how much time we have left."

"No. I would guess no more than a few of your days, at the most, but of course I have no way of knowing. It cannot be much longer. Obviously."

15

Circling the ladder slowly, Darzek made one of his periodic checks of the capsule’s air. He took long, steady breaths, drinking deeply of it, dragging it past his tongue with gastronomic deliberation; and short, powerful sniffs that sought to gauge its freshness around a cloying host of alien odors.

It always tasted and smelled the same to him.

Ysaye descended the ladder on one of his culinary errands, stepped carefully around Darzek, and expertly mixed up six servings of food. He left Darzek’s portion at the foot of his sleeping pad, and went back up the ladder adroitly cradling five triangular bowls between his arms and body. He neither looked at Darzek nor spoke.

Darzek nibbled at the food distastefully, and abandoned his air supply speculation to wonder about Ysaye.

Immediately after the conversation with Zachary, Ysaye began to avoid Darzek. He remained in the upper reaches of the capsule, still the lonely one, estranged now even from his human friend. Darzek could not decide whether the young alien was horrified that Zachary had confided in him, or merely embarrassed because he had not dared to do so himself. Or perhaps some exotic twist of alien mentality was involved.

Or perhaps—

Zachary’s mention of humanity’s good fortune at having only two sexes had startled Darzek into mental immobility. Could it be possible that the aliens had three, that there were two male sexes, and Ysaye was the second—useful, even essential, but fiercely resented?

He hesitated to inquire. As Zachary had said, it was not necessary that he know everything; and at every point that he met alien psychology and physiology head on, they baffled him.

He turned his thoughts again to the capsule’s air supply.

The air circulation system was wonderfully efficient. It filtered the air, removed carbon dioxide and impurities, restored the oxygen content to specification, and returned the air to use. Now that the system had been explained to him, Darzek’s hunch was that the air would never grow foul. The capsule would continue to remove the carbon dioxide and restore oxygen as long as the supply of oxygen lasted. Then it would circulate air that contained no oxygen. Darzek did not expect a sudden drop from ample oxygen to none at all, but he felt certain that the end would come with very little warning.

All of this was byway of attempting to figure out how much time he had in which to concoct a miracle. Between the capsule’s outer and inner shells was an enormous storage capacity for air and water; but how much air had been stored there, and how quickly they were using it, were matters vague beyond conjecture.

But the essential ingredient in this miracle that Darzek must shape was not time, but distance. He could save the aliens only by moving them to safety. His adversary was the ruthless, uncompromising reality that lurked just beyond the capsule walls: the Moon. Neither man nor alien was a match for it without the sustaining resources of another world.

Zachary descended, emulating Darzek’s technique of sliding down the ladder. "Have you enjoyed your cigarette today?" he asked.

"Not yet," Darzek said. "But ‘this would be as good a time as any."

It had been Zachary’s suggestion that they attempt to manufacture cigarettes. He produced a crisp, clothlike material, and in this they rolled such substances as the capsule was able to supply. Some of these burned slowly, raising a veritable fog of choking smoke; others burned with the sputtering rapidity of a time fuse. Finally they found a dark, granular substance that proved to be almost smokable—though it gave off a nasty-lung, purplish smoke and left Darzek’s mouth in a state of acutely puckered sensitivity—and Darzek fashioned himself a reserve of a dozen cigarettes.

During one of the least successful experiments Alice and Xerxes came to investigate the source of the smoke. Alice informed Darzek, by way of Zachary’s translation, that a burning cigarette needlessly squandered oxygen.

"So does breathing," Darzek responded cheerfully, and Alice received the translation and retired without further comment.

Darzek yearned again for the presence of Ted Arnold. Arnold would have calculated the precise amount of oxygen burned in each puff of a cigarette, and knowledgeably estimated the number of seconds of life lost thereby. Arnold would have been a man after Alice’s own heart.

Darzek lit a synthetic cigarette, and tried not to wince on the first puff.

"If you would care now to teach the game to me, I have brought the materials," Zachary said.

"Certainly," Darzek said.

The game that had so intrigued Ysaye had aroused Zachary’s interest, so they proceeded to fill with ticktacktoe diagrams several large sheets of the same material that had been used for cigarette papers. Zachary proved quite as inept as Ysaye had been, but Darzek suspected that his mind was on Other things.

"You mentioned," Zachary said finally, "that you would trade information."

"Any information you want," Darzek said, "provided I have your pledge that you won’t record it for your successors."

"Certainly. They would not accept it if we did. Because we have failed, any message from us would be suspect."

"But surely they will try to find out what happened—where you went wrong, and that sort of thing."

"They will know at once that our power plant exploded," Zachary said. "That they will investigate carefully. Such a disaster as this one has never occurred in all of our history, of course much will be made of it. From your presence they will conclude that we blundered or violated the Code, but no time will be wasted in speculating as to why we blundered or violated the Code."

"My people would speculate," Darzek said. "They would want to know why, so they could avoid a recurrence."

"Indeed. But perhaps your people are more uniform in thought and action. What I would like to know—only from what you would call curiosity—is why Universal Trans continued to accept passengers when some of its passengers were not reaching their destinations."

"There’s a simple explanation. There were no such passengers."

Zachary laid down Darzek’s pencil. "We know that the company was informed. The subject was discussed by the directors. You were hired to investigate it. We ourselves wrote letters to newspapers so that everyone would know about it. And yet the company proceeded as if nothing had happened."

"Nothing had happened," Darzek said. "If a bona fide passenger had failed to reach his destination, friends and relatives would have complained, the police would have made inquiries—even one such disappearance might have stopped the company’s operations. As soon as our investigation revealed that the missing passengers had used phony identifications, the disappearances were recognized for the fraud that they were. The company’s attention was directed entirely at figuring out how the fraud was carried out."

"But our identifications were flawless!"

"With nothing to back them up. No matter how perfectly forged a driver’s license is, it won’t stand up to investigation if no one of that name has ever lived at that address, or if there is no such address. Of course the newspapers would ignore your letters unless they had some way of proving the allegations."

"I understand. Our plan was doomed from the start. It could not possibly have succeeded."

"Not only that, but sooner or later your phony identifications would have gotten you into trouble. You shouldn’t have copied the number of a Universal Trans officer when you forged license plates."

"It seemed that all of the numbers were taken, and that one was as good as any," Zachary said. "Even so, I believe that we should have succeeded had it not been for you. You have more than justified my apprehensions."

"That night outside my office!" Darzek exclaimed. "What were you going to do? Salt me away somewhere until you’d finished your job on Universal Trans?"

"Nothing as drastic as that," Zachary said. "A few changes in your thinking, a little memory erasing, and you would have declined the Universal Trans position. You would have been home no more than two hours later."

"Memory erasing?"

"It is a common procedure among us, with a number of valuable applications. No doubt the concept is strange to you."

"Not at all," Darzek said. "It didn’t occur to me at the time, because I didn’t know you were aliens. Aliens always erase the memory. We have a substantial literature on that subject."

"I do not understand. We never had occasion to use it on one of your people before."

"Perhaps it’s unfortunate for both of us that you missed your chance then."

"I agree, but the policeman had blown his whistle and we feared that the situation might become complicated. We decided to wait for a better opportunity, but we found none."

"At least one of the directors was passing information to you," Darzek said. "For a price?"

"Indeed, no. One of the directors is merely a good friend. We own some of the Universal Trans stock, and we have permitted this friend the use of the proxies. It is only natural that we expect him in turn to inform us concerning the company’s activities."

"Which of the directors was it?"

"Mr. Miller. Mr. Carl Miller. We have given our support to him because his own business makes him interested in freight. It would have greatly simplified our problem if the company had concentrated on freight instead of passengers. We could then have destroyed its equipment without the worry of inflicting injuries."

"The same way you were blowing up Arnold’s transmitters, I suppose."

"We passed a small explosive through whenever they were used. Then your friend Arnold improved the design, and this no longer could be done. It was very clever of him, since he did not know what was causing his failures."

"Arnold is a very clever man. I take it you were also behind the alleged syndicate of realtors that was buying up Universal Trans stock. You must have a well-established base of operations in New York, to develop so many valuable contacts."

"That is correct. Gwendolyn operated our New York—base, as you call it. If she had been there when you caused the explosion, we should have been rescued long before now. Unfortunately all of us had assembled’ here to discuss the situation and to assist Alice in dealing with you."

"In erasing my memory?"

"It is an extremely delicate operation. Is your understanding complete, now?"

"I doubt that it’ll ever be complete. Why go to such amazing lengths to conceal your activities on Earth?"

"Our system has worked with complete satisfaction in our relationships with more worlds than you could count."

"But do you always operate to block a world’s technological development?"

"Of course not. We do this only when the development might threaten others, exactly as you would feel free to place an adult weapon beyond a child’s reach and return it to its normal play with proper toys."

"Meaning that the human race must grow up, or mature, before it can have the transmitter?"

"Perhaps I oversimplified," Zachary said.

"Then we will never be allowed to have the transmitter because our darkness is the wrong color.

"My people are vastly longer-lived than yours, Jan Darzek, but even we hesitate to use the word never.

"Well, is your activity always destructive, or hindering, as it has been on Earth, or do you sometimes help a planet—say, scientific discoveries or a better food supply?"

"We frequently intervene to accelerate a planet’s development. It depends upon the classification."

"In other words, on the color of the population’s darkness."

"I suppose this is true, indirectly."

"And are you just as secretive when you help a planet as when you hinder it?"

"Naturally. That is our Code."

"What would you say if I told you your Code represents the maniacal conceit of a smugly self-righteous and disgustingly imperious race of misguided zealots?"

"I should regret it exceedingly if your feelings were to force use of such language upon you."

Darzek turned away resignedly. "What’s the racket up sbove?" he asked.

"We are moving essential supplies out of the upper two levels," Zachary said. "We’re going to seal them off. Alice feels that we will use our last oxygen more efficiently if we concentrate it in a smaller area."

"I don’t suppose she’s told anyone how much time we have left."

"No. I would guess no more than a few of your days, at the most, but of course I have no way of knowing. It cannot be much longer. Obviously."